O wha can prudence think upon,
And sic a lassie by him?
O wha can prudence think upon,
And sae in love as I am?
--_Old Song._
Magnus, meanwhile, with quite as much of the "boy" as the "grand"
about him, despite his inches, tiptoed off along passages and through
doorways that he knew by heart, following the hum of voices. So
presently came out into the small summer kitchen, where a pleasant
smell of good cookery steamed and puffed and whiffed from various
vessels within and upon the stove. Dishes stood ready on the table,
with white-covered pans of rolls just waiting to be baked, but save the
old cat, winking and blinking by the oven door, there was nobody in
charge.
Magnus gave her a toss up in the air for old times' sake, peeped
cautiously out at the broad back steps, then let himself easily down
through the open window and came round the other way upon the scene of
the sweet chatter that was going on.
The three girls were on the steps, Rose and Violet hulling
strawberries, while Cherry in a wide check apron, sat on the lowest
step of all with a basket of lettuce at her side, picking over the
fresh green leaves, and dropping them into a pan of cold water. A thick
clump of lilac bushes served as a screen.
"Do you know," Rose was saying, "I cannot believe it, yet. I think I
cried for joy a little bit, when I waked up in the night and remembered
that Magnus was really here."
"And doesn't he look well?" said Violet; "and isn't he a beauty?"
"Do not tell him that," Cherry answered with discretion. She would have
given a ready enough answer a week ago, but somehow, with the continent
no more between them, the young damsel had grown wary.
"I'm afraid everybody else will tell him," said Rose. "But he is not
spoiled a bit _yet_. Don't you think so?"
"Not a bit."
It was a very mild way of giving her estimate, and Cherry scolded
herself that she could not answer freely, as she had always done;
called herself to account for the shyness which had sprung into life
with, indeed, the very first coming of that photograph.
"I am such a goose!" poor Cherry thought, bending down low over the
lettuce basket. "What shall I do to myself? If only he had not acted so
last night!"
And just here, by way of composing matters, two hands came softly round
her head, and were laid lightly and respectfully upon her eyes. It was
one of his old teasing ways with her.
Cherry's start passed almost into a tremor. She put up her hands to
remove the obstruction, and they were taken and held fast; and what
more Magnus might have dared had there been no witnesses, will never be
known.
Cherry lifted her face, trying to speak sternly.
"Magnus," she said, "you have not improved one bit. I thought West
Point was to make a man of you--or a better man--or something."
"It has made 'something' of me," he retorted, gazing down at her. "Give
you three guesses."
"Too much else to do. Set that pan of lettuce on the table, please.
Don't you see how busy I am?" And Cherry drew towards her a basket of
green peas and began to shell with all her might.
"I see it--to the depths of my heart," Magnus answered as he did her
bidding. "Here, Viola, give us your apron. If I don't sit down and help
this girl, I shall have her fainting away on my hands."
"No, you will not," Cherry said very decidedly.
But Magnus spied a spare apron on a nail, and, tying it carefully round
his neck, he put himself down on the doorstep, and dived in among the
pea pods. Always taking, if he could, the very one of which Cherry had
laid hold, and then dropping that and seizing her fingers, and then
mysteriously scattering the peas from his own hands or shaking them
out of hers, so that the rolling things had to be sought on all sides.
Which last process Cadet Kindred pursued so zealously that more than
once his face and Cherry's shining locks came very near together.
The sisters looked on, laughing and delighted. For just so those two
had teased and scolded and played together, since they were big enough
to play, and to see it all go on again in the old fashion was too good
for anything. Of the subtile difference that had crept in, their young
eyes took no note. And Cherry herself tried hard to ignore it, laughing
with the rest, and very well holding her own, but dimly conscious all
the while that things she would have ventured once, she did not venture
now.
"Boy, why do you tie that string round your neck?" said Rose. "Have you
forgotten how aprons are worn?"
"A lost art. But this is the improved style, which I mean to introduce
at West Point. I cannot see how the Tactical Department has overlooked
aprons so long. We're too young to know when to wear overcoats, so
aprons to keep our trousers clean would be just the thing. I'll
introduce them."
"When you go back, I suppose," said Rose sarcastically. "I'll lend you
mine for a pattern."
"When I go back as Com.," Magnus answered with dignity. "When I am Com.
and Cherry is Supe. _then_ you'll see."
"You could see now, if you would look," said Cherry, as a podful of
peas rolled down the step.
"I am looking with all my eyes.--And they dare to call you a summer
girl!" Magnus broke forth, watching the lovely pink cloud of colour
that came and went with such swift changes.
"Will you _please_ tell us what a summer girl is like?" said Violet.
"She has danced about a good deal in your letters, but we everyday
people don't know what she is. Come, boy, describe her."
"Her!" Magnus repeated. "She is to the full as plural as she is
singular."
"Many of them at West Point, are there?" said Rose.
"Car loads; stunning, too, as they can be, some of them. Take your
breath away. Say, girls, where's the old banjo? In existence yet?"
"Oh, dear, yes," said Rose. "Only no one has played it since you went
away."
"And it is here, too," said Violet. "Mother made us bring it this
morning, because she was sure Mr. Erskine would like to hear you sing."
Magnus laughed.
"Thought he couldn't wait until to-morrow," he said. "Or knew _she_
couldn't. Mammy hasn't changed, that is plain. But I shall sing to Miss
Erskine first. About her namesake--and some other things."
He jumped up and went for the banjo, placing himself then in the
doorway where he could look down upon Cherry. She had put away the
peas, and now had in her hand a bowl of yellow cream, which she was
softly beating to a stiff froth. The other girls had finished their
berries, and sat near her on the steps. Beyond, the honey bees hummed
over clover and mignonette, the little brook tinkled along unseen.
Behind him, Magnus could hear the pleasant murmur of the talk that went
on within the house. Then a cow lifted up her voice and gave a long,
plaintive moo, and a wren under the eaves poured out new tidings of the
wealth that came to her every five minutes. Magnus leaned back his head
against the doorpost and listened.
"That bird sings for all she is worth," he said. It took such hold of
him; the sweet home air and sounds and sunshine, the two dear girls
watching him with their loving admiration, and the yet dearer, whose
bent-down face told more than she meant it should, the sights and
scents from hayfields and hills--it came upon Magnus Kindred like a
spell. And as with it all mingled in the echoes of music from the
graduating parade, he struck a few notes on the old banjo, and then
sang out from the depths of his heart:
"Home, home! Sweet, sweet home,
O there's no place like home!
There is no place like home."
Cadet Kindred had by nature a rather rarely fine voice. Art had indeed
never tutored nor trained it, but it was one of those voices which can
never by possibility sing out of tune or time, and in the two years he
had been away, exercise and growth had both strengthened and sweetened
it; a sort of revelation now to the listening girls.
The two sisters gazed at him as if nobody had ever sung before;
Cherry's beater went slower and softer, then stopped, and the girl sat
in breathless listening; until her lips began to tremble, and there
came such a surge of sorrow and sympathy and delight in the music,
and--and--everything else; that Cherry laid one hand upon her breast
as if to quiet and keep it down, and at first dared not look at the
singer, and then could not take her eyes away.
As for Magnus, he had thrown himself into the music, as was his wont,
being for the time all rapt and unconscious of other things. From
"Sweet Home" to "Lang Syne"--back and forth as the band had done--so
went the voice, and it was not until the words woke up some special
association that Magnus took note of the sweet, pitiful eyes that were
fixed on him. The other girls had pulled out their handkerchiefs.
"We twa hae paidlet in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But we've wandered mony a weary fit,
Sen auld lang syne."
"That is just what we did, Cerise--do you remember? And just what I
have done, since."
"But oh, Magnus!" she cried, "were you so homesick as that?"
"Homesick? Your blue apron is rose-colour to it."
"I am glad we did not know," Cherry said with a long breath, beginning
slowly to beat her cream. "You were very good not to tell."
"And did nobody help you or speak to you?" questioned the two young
sisters, coming up nearer to sit at his feet.
"I had help enough," said Magnus, softly twanging the strings of his
banjo. "Everybody from the Com. to the third-class corporals bade me
brace up. And if I wanted a lonely walk in the open air on Saturday, I
had only to wear my hair long and dishevelled as a sign of grief, and
they'd give to me without asking. And if I dead-beat and went to the
Hospital to get a chance to mope a little, Dr. Pestle would give me
some compound to _make_ me sick, lest I should lose my time and be down
there for nothing. The Tacs were so afraid I should 'wet my couch with
briny tears' that they made me keep the old thing tight rolled up till
bed time. I was too tired to cry, then."
"Queer help," said Rose.
"The best that could be, Rosy. They made me mad, and then I was all
right."
"I should call that poor comfort," said Violet.
"Nothing like it, however," said Magnus. "Dries up your feelings
quicker than fourteen pocket-handkerchiefs. You owe the world one, and
you mean to live till you pay it. So suicide can wait."
"Magnus, I wish you would not talk so," Cherry said appealingly.
"Now there is Cerise," Magnus went on. "If I could once make her
thoroughly angry with me, she wouldn't mind anything else that
happened. The thing is how. I haven't found out yet."
"And you never will," said Rose. "You cannot do it."
"I cannot, hey? That is good to know. Gives me great freedom of action.
I'll store up the information for future use."
"What makes you call her Cerise?" said Rose.
"Practising my French. Of course I never thought of her in common
English when I was away."
"Cherry, he cannot be with you five minutes without beginning to
tease," said the girls, laughing. "He is the very same boy he always
was."
"I think he has made good progress in the art of telling fibs," said
Cherry in turn.
"Fibs!" Magnus repeated, with much unworded scorn. "You'll see about
that. I mean to tell the truth while I am home now, if I never do
again." And with the most funny, rollicking tone Mr. Kindred caught up
his banjo and dashed off into "The Girl I Left Behind Me"; rattling it
out, throwing in recitative here and there, and putting such spirit
and vim into the performance that now the girls all laughed till they
nearly cried again; but this time Cherry kept her eyes on her cream.
Then quick and easily as the band had done, Magnus dropped once more
into the plaintive burden of:
"Home, home; sweet, sweet home;
There is no place like home,--
There is no place like home."
But now, when he stopped playing, his two sisters came round him
caressing him, hanging upon him, and even Mrs. Kindred looked in from
the other room and said:
"Magnus, don't play that any more. You break my heart. I shall never be
able to let you go back again."
Magnus laid the banjo aside.
"Don't fret now, mammy," he said. "It has been pretty tough, but the
worst is over."